


The Melancholy of Baked Apples and Lemon Cake

by j_marquis



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series, 悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲 | Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Genre: Birthdays, Death of a Parent, Gen, Melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 09:13:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12251379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_marquis/pseuds/j_marquis
Summary: He buried his mother and his father, and he laid to rest between their graves.





	The Melancholy of Baked Apples and Lemon Cake

He buried what he had left of his father. He buried a robe, folded around a ring, a heavy sword that had gone unused for years. What he had left. What had been in the ruins of the castle, when it crumbled, when the strange mirror image of the castle faded away. Memories of a creature who had once been a man, who had once loved as a man and lived as a man now buried. He planted a tree where he buried his memories, beside the ruins of a tomb, the place where he rested, the place where his mother had been buried and mourned, a tomb his father had built with his own hands, etched her name in a dead language above the door. He rested between his parents like he had when he was an infant and he sought their warmth for comfort. He rested between their memories. 

He rested and he dreamed of happier days. How his mother always insisted on celebrating the day he had been born, telling him it was the happiest day she could remember, and that every year he lived was a miracle. She would make him treats, sweet baked apples with honey, oranges that grew in the frost, lemon cake, if she could get the ingredients from the village. She would make him toys, soft things were always his favorites, a little bear, a bat, a toy cat when he complained of not being able to keep a pet in the castle. His father would bring him toys from far across the land, would make sure that was the day he spent in the castle, at home, playing with his son.

It had always been his favorite day. He would ask his mother, again and again and again when that day was, when it would be, as soon as the first snow fell he wanted it to come. But it fell in the deep of winter, when the snow was thick and heavy on the ground, and it was dark more than it was light, and his father would wake him and take him flying on the cold night air.

He dreamed of the happier days when he knew the love of a family he had buried.

No one would wake him on a cold day and take him flying, or make him lemon cakes and soft toys. No one would tell him that every year he lived was a miracle, he didn't remember which cold day was his, not anymore. And it didn't matter. If he rested, then, he would hope he didn't wake, didn't have to wake.

Waking meant looking into the eyes of his father and knowing that the man had been lost, to grief, to monstrosity, to madness. Waking meant the days were not his, they were days he had to live for humanity, for his mother's memory, to save the people she had so loved. Waking meant there was no one left who had known too-small Adrian Tepes, who asked his mother every day if it was his day, who thought his father was purely good. He never wanted to wake, when he rested.

But he could not die. If he died, and his father rose, it fell on the humans to kill him. He couldn't ask that of them.

Maybe one day it would be safe. One day, he would be sure his father had fallen, and he could rest. And he could wake on a cold day, when the snow fell heavy and it was dark more than it was light. And there would be sweets and soft things, and he would fly.

**Author's Note:**

> aftepes.tumblr.com


End file.
